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Rh and the other Slavs of Austria and Hungary. The success of this plan would have meant that the Czechs and the Southern Slavs would be sacrificed to Germany, on whose Liberalism they naturally could not rely; while, on the other hand, the Serbians, Croats, Romanians, and, more important for the Czechs, the three millions of Slovaks would be handed over to the domination of the Magyars, who had never shown the least tolerance for the feelings of other nationalities in Hungary. In a constitutional and federalist Austria, the Slavs would naturally form a majority; but in a German Union and an independent Hungary, they would be in a minority, oppressed, deprived of their rights, doomed to the ruin from which they had only just escaped half a century before.

Hence the Czech policy was logically anti-German and anti-Magyar: it was Austrian and dynastic. A powerful Austria was their only hope: Austria of the Habsburgs, who had never shown them any consideration, who had never tried to do justice to their claims, and who, for many centuries, had pursued an anti-Slav policy.

It was a question of Austria's existence. The absolutist dynasty considered the Pan-German propaganda dangerous, fearing both the boldness of the German Liberal and Radical Republicans of Frankfort and the absorption of Austria, which would have resulted from the realisation of their